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Originally Posted by Ixtellor";p="
1) I am against farm subsidies.
2) Yes government regulations drive costs up. It is a lot more cost effective for a company to dumb its waste into the river than have to actually dispose of it in a manner that does not hurt human beings and the environment.
But now they have to charge more for Mufflers all because they can't dumb the waste into lake Michigan. BOO HOO.
Ixtellor
P.S. One of us is a blind zealot.
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One of the things government did though, is they took away property rights and riparian rights. Basically, if you owned property and pollution was stinking it up, or if you lived on a river and someone was dumping into it, you could sue the local mill/factory and they would be forced to stop and/or compensate you. Even if a dog pooped on your lawn, you could sue the owner and get money. Now its just thrown out and dogs continue to poop.
Government got involved and said no, mills are more important because mills provide jobs to the community. Government was telling people what the greater good was. Government decided to put the greater good ahead of the individual, property, and riparian rights, so they just took those rights away.
Libertarians would scrap regulation, but they would bring back riparian rights. Basically if you live along a river and it becomes polluted by dumping, you can sue the company and they will be forced to stop or compensate you. It would also serve as a deterrent.
Farm susidies are stupid, most regulation is useless, in Canada we have a broadcasting company called the CBC and it takes our tax dollars and I think thats bad.
In all aspects of the domestic economy though, it would be mistake to blindly follow the Libertarian arguements the Truth-Bringer and others constantly advocate.
For example, I still think government does have a role to play in electricity markets. Look at Ontario in the early 1900s, the government came in, build hydro dams all over the place, build transmission lines between all cities, brought electricity to rural consumers, this all helped advance the economy way faster than it would have doing nothing. Hydro dams are capital intensive, no private company could develop them. Same with a transmission system. Tax-payers a) got their money back in only a few years because hydro dams pay for themselves quickly b) got cheaper power from these sources, and c) saved money because the transmission system used up power that would otherwise be wasted. Private companies eventually would have done this, but clearly Ontario wouldn't have one of the best economies in the world if we waited an extra 20-30 years for this development to occur.